Defense and traceback mechanisms in opportunistic wireless networks

 In this thesis, we have identified a novel attack in OppNets, a special type of packet dropping attack where the malicious node(s) drops one or more packets (not all the packets) and then injects new fake packets instead. We name this novel attack as the Catabolism attack and propose a novel attack detection and traceback approach against this attack referred to as the Anabolism defence. As part of the Anabolism defence approach we have proposed three techniques: time-based, Merkle tree based and Hash chain based techniques for attack detection and malicious node(s) traceback. We provide mathematical models that show our novel detection and traceback mechanisms to be very effective and detailed simulation results show our defence mechanisms to achieve a very high accuracy and detection rate

Establishing trust relationships and secure channels in opportunistic networks

&nbsp;An effective system with techniques and algorithms that preserve the completeness and integrity of packets in a network and protects Opportunistic Networks from packet dropping and modification attacks has been proposed in this thesis. The techniques and attributes used to create the system involve using Merkle trees, trust, and reputation.<br /